Contact Information

Education

Research Interests

Modern China, urban politics and administration, the history of Chinese family life, Chinese socialism, humor in history, the place of non-U.S. history in American intellectual life

Current Research

I have just completed a book on the 1931 best-selling novel Jia (Family) by the Chinese New Culture activist and anarchist Ba Jin, comparing how the novel represents the city and people at its center to what we can learn about them from historical records. I am beginning work on a study of how socialism came to be understood in urban China in the 1950s.

“Generational and Cultural Fissures in the May Fourth Movement: Wu Yu (1872–1949) and the Politics of Family Reform.” In Beyond the May Fourth Paradigm: In Search of Chinese Modernity, edited by Kai-wing Chow, Tze-ki Hon, Hung-yok Ip, and Don C. Price, 131–48. Lanham, MD: Lexington Press, 2008.

“Warfare and Modern Urban Administration in Chinese Cities.” In Cities in Motion: Interior, Coast, and Diaspora in Transnational China, edited by Sherman Cochran and David Strand, 53–78. Berkeley: University of California East Asian Institute, 2008.